The Difference Between
by Tyger and Darkdracofire
Summary: He's not sure where he's going, exactly. /Bakura, Watanuki, an unexpected act of kindness/


For IJ's no_true_pair. Prompt: Watanuki and Bakura: an unexpected act of kindness.

The Difference Between  
_(Dreams & Reality)  
By Tyger._

He's not sure where he's going, exactly. Not sure where he is, either. He's not lost, though; he could get back if he wanted to. He doesn't want to. He's too tired to remember why. All he remembers is he needs to keep moving. Just keep moving. Where he is doesn't matter. Where he's going doesn't matter. Just keep moving.

Just keep moving.

Just keep moving.

Just keep - he trips, falls. He needs to get up. He needs to -

The concrete is rough, against his face, a never ending grey taking up most of his vision. It's wet, and cold. It's raining, though not hard; he can feel it falling on his face. His hair feels like wet ropes, across the back of his neck. He hears a car pass. Two. They don't stop. They probably don't even see him. It's late at night, after all. He needs to get up. To keep moving.

The darkness is closing in. It's not the reason why; he almost welcomes it. It curls around him, batting up against him like Amane's cat used to-

Amane. Amane, Amane, AmaneAmaneAmane. He wishes she were here. She won't be. She won't ever be. She's dead - he'd been dead too - and gone - like he had, but he'd come back, and come back and come back - until he hadn't. He hadn't.

He hadn't and he won't ever again. Just like her. Just like her, just like - they're dead and gone and he's so alone, so incredibly alone... The darkness wraps around him. He can still feel the cold, and the rain, but somehow it's warm, too.

Being warm is kind of nice. He wouldn't mind ending like this. Just... fading away, into the dark. Maybe he'd be dead and gone then, too.

Maybe not.

He should get up. It's hard, maybe. It hurts, maybe, body burning with strain... he gets one hand up, flat on the ground, starts pushing - and an eye opens, in the darkness in front of him. It's not a human eye.

He freezes. That's not a monster. Not one he knows, not one he's seen, not one connected at _all_, to blood and darkness and cursed gold. It's not a monster. It's a _thing_. It's a _hungry_ thing, and maybe he wouldn't mind fading into the dark, but he doesn't want to be _eaten_. Not by a _thing_. Not by anybody. He'll fade if he choses to, but not by anything else's will. His life. His choice. If there's one mistake he's learned from, it's that.

They face off; the _thing_ uncertain of him - how many people does the dark warm? - and he not willing to provoke it. He's not sure of his strength.

It's about to jump, and he's about to push himself back, with everything he has, when the salt hits them. The _thing_ dissolves into oily black smoke. He feels he should, too, but the salt just... hits him. Doesn't burn. Just feels like salt, grainy and coarse like sand. The darkness leaves, though - he's not surprised. It was probably just there for the _thing_, anyway.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS." He looks up. There's a boy there, maybe his age, glaring down at him in indignation. He uses the strength he'd been going to dodge with to push himself up far enough to sit.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING," says the boy. He has no reply, though it doesn't matter; the boy keeps yelling. And walks over, pulling him up by the arm. He sways on his feet, a little. That's fine, he'll be fine, once he keeps moving again-

"Where the hell do you live, anyway?" says the boy, glaring up at him.

"Domino," he says, without thinking. The boy stares at him, for a long second.

"DOMINO!? What the hell! That's hours away! HOURS!" He's not surprised to hear that. It feels like he's been moving forever, though he can't have been. "And it's after the last train! You moron! What the hell were you thinking!?" He still doesn't have an answer, for that. "Well," says the boy, scowling even more and running a bright blue eye up and down him. Blue eye. Foreign blood, then. Like him. But only one eye is blue. Only one? "Okay then. The Great Watanuki-sama is going to deign to let you into his home for the night, you sodden bedraggled thing! Be grateful!"

He stares. "You don't - I'll be fine," he says.

"Ha!" says the boy, pulling him along by one arm. "You'll die of pneumonia or something, is what you'll do, if I leave you out here! You have a name?"

"I," he says. He really has to think about it. Thinking is... difficult. "Bakura," he remembers eventually. "Bakura Ryou."

The boy frowns down at him. "That's your real name, isn't it?" he asks.

"Yes," he says.

The boy snorts. "Watanuki Kimihiro," he says. And that's _his_ real name, too, he can tell by the way the scraps of dark left in the back of his mind _glee_.

"It's a pleasure," he murmurs, more out of habit than anything else.

"...yeah," says Watanuki, and strongarms him home in silence.

---

He's wetter than he was before, though not by much. And he's warm. Showers, Bakura thinks, are the best modern invention _ever_. He lets the showerhead drop, leans back against the wall, dizzy and exhausted. But he can't sleep yet. His legs feel like they're going to collapse under him, but he won't let them.

After a moment, he sighs, brings the shower back up to rinse off his hair. He's clean. He can't remember the last time he cleaned himself, so it must have been a while. At least the rain would have been keeping the smell down.

A bath would be nice; warm and relaxing, but Bakura's pretty sure if he had one, he'd fall asleep in the middle of it, and drown. And that's something he doesn't want to do. So he walks over and opens the door, grabs the towel waiting there, presses it to his face for a moment. It's warm and _dry_, and that's even better. He wraps it around his body, lets his hair drip down his back.

The bathroom is small, but functional. He can hear the washing-machine going; the things that were in his pockets have been laid out neatly on top of it, next to a faded yukata. Despite it's obvious age, it's well cared for; no seams are fraying, no holes are forming. He thinks this probably says a lot about the boy who'd taken him in. It's soft and warm, and soaks up the water from his hair immediately, before he takes the towel to it. Causes his hair to frizz out, a bit, but it's better than dripping all over a stranger's home. The slippers provided are in much the same state as the yukata.

The rooms are sparse. No tv, no ornaments. A small kotatsu in the tatami room; the brightly-coloured blanket over it is the newest things he's seen - it's obviously hand-made. No one would mass-produce such detailed embroidery. There's a small bookshelf, filled with textbooks, and homecraft instructions. A few well-cared for plants. Excepting the lack of gaming equipment, it's a lot like his own apartment.

Watanuki is in the kitchen, muttering under his breath about stupid morons and exposure and raining and hours away. He thinks he's probably being insulted.

Unlike much of the rest of the apartment, the kitchen actually looks lived in. It's meticulously clean, but there are _things_ in it. Drying washing and canisters of stuff and... cooking things. Bakura isn't a cook, he doesn't know what most of them even _are_. But he can tell that it's actually used. The fact that Watanuki is flitting around it, doing things that are obviously related to the divine smell in the air helps, of course.

"Thank you again for the shower," he says from the entrance, not wanting to get in the way.

Watanuki jumps, twists mid air, and lands with a spatula pointed at Bakura. "WHO THE - oh, it's you. WHAT THE HELL DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING, SNEAKING UP ON ME LIKE THAT!?"

"I... oh," he says. It's not something he does consciously. It's not something he'd ever learned. But sometimes he catches himself moving without sound (like a thief) (like a ghost). "I'm sorry."

"YOU'D BETTER BE. THIS GREAT WATANUKI-SAMA IS GRACIOUSLY FEEDING YOUR UNDERFED MORONIC SELF, AFTER ALL."

"That is incredibly kind of you, Watanuki-kun," he says, bowing a little.

Watanuki stares for a moment. "WELL DON'T DO IT AGAIN," he says eventually, before turning around in a huff to go back to the kitchen.

It isn't much longer, before the food is ready; Bakura sits down where instructed to, and doesn't ask questions. They eat savoury crepés - with vegetables and small, dried prawns cooked in, with a butter sauce poured over, instead of fruit and powdered sugar. Bakura thinks they would go very well with profiteroles for desert, though he doesn't dare mention such. Watanuki is quite obviously an over-achiever, in addition to being a wonderful chef.

"Thank you for the food," he says softly, after eating, and tries to help with the dishes. Watanuki refuses quite adamantly, and so, he watches as he does them, at a loss.

Watanuki is not graceful, though he obviously knows his kitchen as well as the back of his hand. He tends to flail at the slightest provocation, for one, and he doesn't seem... sure, in his body, for another. Bakura understands that - they're at the age where things just start _growing_, with absolutely no warning. And there's just something about his eyes... not the colours. Deeper than that.

He makes up his mind, and walks forward - silent, again, not that it matters. He wraps his arms around Watanuki from behind, buries his head into his shoulder, and breathes in. He smells like rain, and dirt, and sorrow. Ancient grief, recent hurts. And love. Bakura is not surprised. Watanuki jumps, flails. Bakura holds on; he's stronger than he looks.

"Wh-what?" Watanuki says, dropping the dish in his hands. It falls back into the sink with a clunk.

Bakura licks his neck. Just enough to see if he tastes like he smells. He does.

Watanuki goes very still. "That's not - you don't -"

"I know," he says, keeping his face close enough that his lips brush against his neck. "And if it were, I would deny you." Lethally, if necessary. "But you have been very kind to me, and," he presses just a little closer; Watanuki shivers. "I would like to do something for you, as well."

When he gets no response, other than a chocked-off noise, he turns Watanuki around, puts their faces close enough together they're almost touching. "Is that okay?" Watanuki stares, for a long hot second. Then he leans in and kisses him, and Bakura figures that's as good an answer as any.

He's pretty sure Watanuki is a virgin, by the way he kisses, the way he moans, the way the doesn't let anything go past hands. It's kind of cute. And it's not as though Bakura really has the energy to do much else. But, more than that, everything's just kind of... nice.

Afterwards, Watanuki's too tired, to make things awkward. It's very late, after all, and he's the sort of person that goes on full-throttle all day, and collapses in a heap at night, as far as Bakura can tell.

"You're not okay, are you?" he asks, half-asleep.

Bakura blinks at him, then smiles sadly. "No," he says.

There's a long moment, as Watanuki's sleep-fogged brain processes things. "My boss..." he says, eventually. "She sells wishes."

"I see," says Bakura, and then they both drift off.

---

He wakes.

The concrete is wet and cold on his cheek. There's rain dripping off his eyelashes. He gets to his feet, silently; he's slept so long that the sun's come up. Not that it's visible, though the clouds, but at least he can see where he is.

He looks at the broken-down empty lot that he'd fallen in front of. He looks at the outline of a house, he can see through the darkness. He thinks of the things he wants.

He keeps walking. He knows he has nothing to pay with.


End file.
